Right, and Marilyn Monroe's death is why people believe that the moon landing was faked? Or are we overthinking this?

I would suggest that people believe in Pizzagate because other people who knew better but had reasons to pretend not encouraged them to do so. Once you start from the premise that Hillary Clinton is the Queen of Night, and that clues to this truth are woven throughout the fabric of reality, then any old list of nouns--pizza, takeout, whatever--can be mapped to any other list plausibly enough.

(If I sound grouchy about this, I am--I sometimes shop or dine on the block where Comet Pizza is.)

The "winner take all" turn of the culture has hurt the legitimacy of the system and I think it feeds anti-vax, "the moon landing was a hoax", etc. It's just too transparent that the people in charge grade their own papers.

To counter it, the elite has to be held to a standard higher than we hold other people. Otherwise the erosion will keep happening.

> the elite has to be held to a standard higher than we hold other people

It's so infuriating when U.S. political pundits interpret the Impeachment Clause phrase, "high Crimes and Misdemeanors", as requiring ordinary criminal or even heightened criminal behavior. The qualifier "high" refers to the office, and reflects a notion that public officials in positions of trust should be held to a stricter moral standard than in private life--specifically, the moral standards we should expect of those entrusted with high offices. That is, behavior that would not be criminal for a private individual could be a high crime or misdemeanor for a public official.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_crimes_and_misdemeanors

It's mostly Republicans who push this interpretation (though Democrats made similar arguments, albeit less vociferously, during Watergate). But Democrats remain silent because the Impeachment Clause is worded in a way that gives Congress an affirmative duty to prosecute high crimes and misdemeanors, and for strategic reasons the Democratic caucus would prefer to shirk that duty.

It's tough because the law can't compel people to be good.

It's a fundamental problem with liberalism and is part of the crisis that liberalism faces all around the world; people see our institutions failing and they start to wonder if maybe China has a better idea.

If you are in a position of authority (parent, teacher, manager, ...) one thing you should learn right away is that you need to model good behavior if you want to control bad behavior. That's because your subordinates will certainly model any bad behavior you do.

It's always shocked me how bipartisan the moral rot is. For instance, Epstein was close to both Trump and Clinton. Both Trump and Clinton had daughters who married the sons of convicted felons. Given that Chelsea Clinton might be interested in public life some day I can't for the life of me imagine why she married the son of this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Mezvinsky#Criminal_acti...

Confucianism is not that great in practice.

Like how police officers are (or should be) held to higher standards when dealing with illegal acts.

I'm half-convinced of the notion that the "Pizzagate" idea was spread on the plan that "whatever our side is about to be accused of, make sure that the other side is accused of it first".

It's like projection, only not unconscious; it's deliberate deflection to make the real thing look less believable when it comes up.

What I am more certain of, is that in general in modern politics, disinformation has been weaponized to a high degree.

That doesn't make sense since Democrats were accused of having sex with minors in both cases.

The first is a loony conspiracy theory.

The second appears to have a variety of folks from both ends of the political spectrum (and internationally) entwined, including Bill Clinton, but balanced with Trump and his Secretary of Labor on the other side of things. I fully expect it to involve a variety of non-political folks, as well as internationally.

Which Democrat said that Epstein was a great guy who they like to have fun with? Which democrat was possibly introduced to their beautiful wife by Epstein ?

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, especially partisan flamewar.

Yes, this thread was a wreck to begin with, but it's still not ok to break the site guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm liberal as all get out, but it seems clear Epstein was an equal-opportunity cultivator of powerful figures in both parties.

Trump's being dumb enough to publicly brag about the association is very on-brand, of course.

> I'm liberal as all get out, but it seems clear Epstein was an equal-opportunity cultivator of powerful figures in both parties.

> Trump's being dumb enough to publicly brag about the association is very on-brand, of course.

Trump is playing the main street media like a violin. If you are thinking he is doing something because he seems stupid, it's just part of the plan.

Trump did say back in 2012 that the pedophiles had to go. [1]

And, since his inauguration, the massive crackdown on them has largely gone unreported.

1. https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/2552948836...

Any person who looks at Trump holistically can't trust his tweets at all. They are consistently contradictory.

Trump uses tweets for two purposes. First is to inform the public. Second is to further his strategies.

An example is how the Squad of 4 started to attack Pelosi. Trump slammed the 4 on Twitter and caused Pelosi to jump in and start defending them. This had the effect of making these left extremist Dems the face of the Democrat party. How does that benefit Trump? It makes the Dem party unpalatable to a majority of Americans, which turns 2020 into a cakewalk for him.

Trump also said he wouldn't take vacations like Obama (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/27060941248019251...) and that he'd stand up for the LGBT community (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/74277157603946086...).

His Twitter pronouncements are so commonly contradictory to his actual actions or subsequent tweets that there's an entire subreddit of them: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrumpCriticizesTrump

Yeah well he's been rounding up those pedos up so I can forgive him some inconsistencies. [1]

1. https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/trump-busts-1500...

My favorite part of that article is definitely "The MSM refuses to report on President Trump's war on pedophiles and on child sex-trafficking rings in spite of the recent avalanche of arrests which include the following:" where "the following" is a list of links to MSM articles.

Debunking yourself in your own story is... special.

edit: Here's a thorough debunking of the core claim.

https://reason.com/2017/02/27/trumps-fake-crackdown-on-sex-t...

> edit: Here's a thorough debunking of the core claim.

https://reason.com/2017/02/27/trumps-fake-crackdown-on-sex-t....

My favorite part of your thorough debunking article is where it was published a month before the one I cited.

Edit: plus, I wouldn't consider local TV stations, Breitbart and Townhall.com to be part of the MSM.

> My favorite part of your thorough debunking article is where it was published a month before the one I cited.

It's a debunking of the claim.

Church Militant's silly article was not the first to make the claim, nor was it the last. I can write a "the Earth is flat" article today with claims that've already been debunked for centuries.

Ah, well. At any rate it will be interesting to see what the FBI does with all those blackmail videos they recovered from Epstein's paradise island. I seem to recall there's no statute of limitations with crimes against children...

The conversation was civil. Why was this flagged??

I think the majority of politicians in Western countries have at least one filmed child sex episode. Assume you're a very powerful politician and you need underlings in powerful positions, which you can help novices get, but once they get powerful they become independent and can stop being underlings. Filming them having sex with an kid, or at least an obviously underage teen, is the single best blackmail material possible. Damage potential basically equal to murder evidence, but there's no hard to hide murder victim - and in child sex one victim can be used several times, as opposed to just one time in murder.

As every such cabal would be much more effective than a lone politician, eventually power would entirely shift to competing cabals bound by child sex blackmail - making it impossible to dismantle externally, because both the executive, the judicial system and the biggest media would be controlled by people in such arrangements. Media in particular would have the main job - in case of any genuine leaks, mix the truth with outlandish claims to discredit it as a dumb conspiracy theory.

The game theory works out so nice I don't see any alternative, it's the stable state of the political system. I can see it being murder though, if disposing a body is much easier than my estimate.

In non-Western societies it could be something else. In North Korea, being filmed shitting on a photo of the current leader would work much better I guess.

Just a thought:

Most people have morals and wouldn't have sex with an underage person, nor murder someone, just because their boss told them to. They would tell their boss to go fuck himself.

Then they wouldn't get a promotion and most likely never attain any power.

Unless they learned after the first time and secretly recorded their boss trying to get them to commit crimes and use that as their blackmail...

Back in 2002 cameraphones were not as common as now, and even now it is probably acceptable to limit camera access to "massage therapy" centers. The trick with the Epstein scheme is that with the massage excuse Epstein has some plausible deniability. GP sees this: the hardest to prosecute cabals with the most dedicated will be the most evolutionarily successful. (I might argue that a religious or ethnically based cabal would be more successful.)

I don’t think this is the case at all. I’m not sure what you mean by, “the game theory works out so nice I don’t see any alternative”. Our political system was in place long before the technology was here to do this sort of thing. The alternative is that voters just aren’t educated about every detail of a candidates personal life so some sketchy candidates get through.

> Our political system was in place long before the technology was here to do this sort of thing.

People have been blackmailed for scandalous actions long before video to record the incidents. No technology is required.

I don't think it's that far-fetched.

Visiting sketchy sex-related businesses or doing drugs is pretty par for the course in both Eastern and Western business culture as a form of trust-building between parties.

I can definitely see the level of "sketchiness" increasing as you climb the power ladder.

Agreed. Why would a billionaire support a candidate he "believes in" when he can outright own the candidate? There is that saying, "a big lie is easier to sell than a little lie" -- average middle class people comprehend cheating on taxes and spouses, but they simply don't have the exposure to understand there are psychopaths in the world who have zero morals and would kill for a glass of water if they knew they could get away with it. Look at the leaders throughout almost every civilization in history, it's the NORM for those in power to have their political rivals murdered-- very often their own family members. Anyone who thinks this is crazy or surprising is woefully ignore of history and the human condition.

Ottoman Empire's practice of fratricide as a way to choose the next sultan is a good example.

>the famous article from Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror's Law of Governance states that "Any of my sons ascend the throne, it's acceptable for him to kill his brothers for the common benefit of the people (nizam-i alem). The majority of the ulama (muslim scholars) have approved this; let action be taken accordingly."

https://www.dailysabah.com/feature/2015/08/07/the-history-of...